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NYC jails oversight body rejects plan to ban mail and packages at Rikers
By
Matt Katz
Published Mar 14, 2023
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Matt Katz / Gothamist
By
Matt Katz
Published Mar 14, 2023
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A city jails oversight board rebuffed the Adams administration’s push to ban physical mail and some packages from being delivered to detainees on Rikers Island, refusing to bring the issue up for a vote.
If the proposal had been voted on and passed, workers at a private company, Securus, would have scanned detainees’ mail at an off-site facility and have it delivered to them via the company’s tablets. The proposal also called for restricting packages from coming directly from loved ones; instead, they would be shipped from approved vendors, like Amazon or Target.
At a meeting on Tuesday, Correction Commissioner Louis Molina said the reason he requested a ban on physical mail and personal packages is because fentanyl is making its way onto Rikers Island by being soaked onto paper — including letters, children's drawings and Bibles — that is then consumed by detainees.
Molina said at least four and as many as six detainees died last year in city jails from fentanyl overdoses. There were 19 deaths in total.
Several members of the Board of Correction, which is the department’s oversight agency, countered Molina’s claims, saying there isn’t evidence that most drugs are coming in via mail and packages.
Activists who spoke in support of detainees’ rights noted that correction officers have repeatedly been arrested for smuggling drugs into the facilities. Last year, a former correction officer admitted in court that he smuggled drugs into the jails by putting them between his legs. And earlier this year, a seventh officer was indicted in a long-standing investigation into a drug smuggling operation involving officers.
At a rally last month opposing the proposal to ban physical mail and personal packages, Marco Barrios holds up a letter he received from his daughter when he was incarcerated many years ago at Rikers Island.
Matt Katz / WNYC
Officers are not scanned for contraband like other visitors, but Molina said this week that for the first time randomly selected officers will walk through body scanners as they enter one jail facility on Rikers Island.
Molina said that wet envelopes and letters that arrived at Rikers recently tested positive for fentanyl, and he showed the board incident reports involving fentanyl-positive paper found in the jails. The department’s overall drug interdiction strategy is being strengthened, he said, with the jails’ K-9 dogs now able to detect fentanyl and staff vehicles subject to inspection.
“I understand the sentimentality of mail, but ... fentanyl is deadly,” Molina said. “And I want people to be alive.”
It is very unusual for the Board of Correction to reject this type of Department of Correction request.
Marco Barrios, a former detainee at Rikers, told the board at its meeting that the mail he received while incarcerated was his “lifeline.”
“Every time I felt like giving up or losing my mind, I read them over and over or smelled it,” he said. “Maybe I was imagining it, but it smelled like my daughter or my mother ... I wanna see drugs out of the prisons as well, but this is not going to address it.”
The board’s rebuke of the city correction agency is the culmination of simmering tensions. Molina recently skipped two consecutive board meetings where he was scheduled to testify, and he blocked board members’ access to videos from inside the facility.
At the meeting on Tuesday, the board also voted down a proposal cutting its number of annual meetings. A proposal limiting public comments was allowed to stand.
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public safety
Matt Katz
Matt Katz is a former WNYC & Gothamist reporter.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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